It’s that time of year again. Spotify Wrapped and Apple Music Year in Review have dropped, sending us all into a reminiscent trance. I had my suspicions of what artists, albums and songs would land in my Top 5, but I have to admit I’m a bit surprised on what Spotify is claiming, so much so that I have to go back and check the stats for myself.
My Spotify Wrapped:
The very first thing that was suspicious to me was my total minutes listened. Allegedly, I only listened to 34,662 minutes of music this year, which is half of what I listened to in 2022 (63,127 minutes) and 20k less than in 2023 (57,269 minutes). The variance here is way too large considering how often I listen to music, so let’s take the below with a grain of salt.
According to Spotify, my Top 5 Artists this year were Charli XCX, Amaarae, Billie Eilish, Doechii and Beyonce, respectively.
In hindsight, I had the most to say about 4 of these artists in my Weekly Flows. Each of their projects that were released this year resonated in some way with me and I had them on repeat for some period of time, heavy. Generally, I’m not disputing this, but the one outlier for me is Beyonce. I don’t think I listened to Beyonce nearly as much as my other top artists this year, nor did I particularly care for Cowboy Carter. And, in my top songs list, not a single Beyonce song even made the top 20, so I’m a bit confused on that placement. I would’ve expected Sabrina Carpenter, Daniel Caesar, Tyler, The Creator or SZA to have obtained that fifth spot as many of their songs landed in my top songs list and were frequently played.
Allegedly, my Top 5 songs were:
- Birds of a Feather by Billie Eilish
- Sex, Violence, Suicide by Amaarae
- Chihiro by Billie Eilish
- Von Dutch by Charli XCX
- Co-Star by Amaarae
This is where eyebrows were raised and audible “huhs?” were expressed. Did I listen to these songs many times this year? For sure. I would argue though that these were my most-listened songs from June-July only. Where is Tyler, The Creator? Where is Daniel Caesar? Where is SZA? These songs above did have their moment periodically, however the erasure of my first half of the year in this review is astounding.
And then, perhaps we need to add some discretion and outlier analysis to this report to account for, well, stimming. Running a song into the ground is no foreign concept for me, so I audibly had to laugh when my stats for Birds of a Feather came through– I listened to that song 94 times this year! Including 49 times in 1 month! That song truly did scratch something in my brain, I can’t even be mad at that or question it. Top song worthy though? Highly unlikely.
The biggest miss in all of Spotify Wrapped this year is the omission of Top 5 Albums. As a full-album listener, I was really looking forward to this leaderboard in particular as so many projects were released within the past 12 months. Hit Me Hard and Soft, and Brat, were two albums that I enjoyed more than enough to watch their Apple Music interviews with Zane Lowe to hear them talk about the thought process behind creating the album. There have been albums I’ve enjoyed before and listened to plenty, but this was a first for me. Ravyn Lenae’s album ‘Bird’s Eye’ and Clairo’s ‘Charm’ also had their moments in my rotation this year, along with some carry-forward albums like SZA’s ‘SOS,’ Daniel Caesar’s ‘NEVER ENOUGH,’ and Tyler, The Creator’s ‘Call Me If You Get Lost.’
I definitely cycled through many types of music this year, transitioned through many phases of life and turned towards different genres to match my newfound mentality and reality. I appreciated the ‘2024 Music Evolution’ section as it touched on this very component, even though the output was rather nonsensical. My three phases of the year were:
- March – “Chill Throwback Pop R&B”: this is consistent to the type of music I was listening to at the end of 2023 – beginning of 2024. seems rational and accurate, even though this genre was seemingly absent from the rest of my Spotify Wrapped leaderboards.
- June – “Indie Sleaze Cheerleading Pop”: this one kills me because I would not consider Indie Sleaze and Cheerleading Pop to be adjacent genres. Artists like Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter and Beyonce are ones that Spotify mentioned for this genre– Indie Sleaze though? Feels like a reach. I heavily leaned into my “alt girl” Spotify playlist this summer, listened to a lot of Steve Lacy, while also heavily listening to the Pop girls in preparation for Lollapalooza. I kind of am picking up on where they were going with this, but it feels like a lazy classification.
- October – “Pink Pilates Princess Catwalk K-Pop”: Did every queer person get some version of “Pink Pilates Princess”? Seems like a generalization if I ever recognized one! At least they had the decency to recognize the K-Pop wave that I’ve been leaning into within the last quarter of the year. KATSEYE, LSSERAFIM, and ILLIT were the 3 artists mentioned for this categorization, which is accurate I guess.. Seeing on social media that a lot of other pop music listeners also got “Pink Pilates Princess” is throwing me though. Again, lazy of Spotify for this classification!
I popped over to Spotify Stats to do some fact-checking and see what I have actually been listening to throughout 2024. It’s interesting to see the drastic shift in my listening from the last 12 months to the last 6 month period– basically entirely replaced by different songs and artists. No doubt 2024 was a dynamic year, so much so that I fear both parts need to be included. The person I was in the beginning of 2024 obviously is not who I ended up being at the end of the year, why generalize the year and erase that nuance?
I’ve listened to songs hundreds of times in a short time span, then abandoned them for the rest of the year. I’ve spanned many artists and subgenres, listened to full projects all the way through, and even entered new genres. I don’t [fully] doubt the accuracy of Spotify Wrapped and Spotify stats, but it lacked variety in its analysis, leaving me craving more. And with the incorporation of AI in their process, the overall experience just fell flat. It’s a right of passage to share, compare and discuss our Spotify Wrapped amongst each other, and yet that one joy has been taken from us and watered down as well. At least we can all relish in the inaccuracies together and know that we have a bit more taste and variation than these snapshots are leading us to believe!
Spotify and the stats can show me what I listened to the most, but it can’t tell me what albums or songs hit different for me or altered my brain chemistry this year.
As a newfound full-album listener, I was really looking forward to a Top 5 album leaderboard since so many projects were released within the past 12 months. ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft,’ and ‘Brat,’ were two albums that I enjoyed more than enough to watch their Apple Music interviews with Zane Lowe to hear them talk about the creative process behind their albums. Ravyn Lenae’s album ‘Bird’s Eye‘ and Clairo’s ‘Charm‘ also had their moments in my rotation this year, along with some carry-forward albums like SZA’s ‘SOS,’ Daniel Caesar’s ‘NEVER ENOUGH,’ and Tyler, The Creator’s ‘Call Me If You Get Lost.’
It’s challenging to pick just 5, but here are my Top 5 albums of the year based on how impressed I was upon first listen, listening frequency / strong inkling to choose to listen to the album, and general enjoyment:
Most of these I’ve shared my thoughts on throughout the year in prior Weekly Flows, so feel free to explore back to those to hear my full analysis. These each held up a pillar of my being as a listener— spanning various genres while still providing a positive sensory experience to my ears. Although released throughout the year and listened to for various amounts of time due to release date, none of that takes away from that initial listening experience and how it resonated for me. A different emotion was invoked and brought to life when I listened to these albums, driving me to choose them again and again to feel that sensation. From upbeat “pink pilates princess,” to edgy hip-hop, to chill sad girl music, to peak femininity — this top 5 has it all for me. These 5 really saw me through the year, so cheers to that!
THE IDENTITY CRISIS 